This spring’s committee includes Dr. Grace
Cheng, chair of the committee and assistant professor of political
science, and Dr. Christopher Fung, assistant professor of anthropology,
along with faculty members from the EFP, communication, management,
and English departments.

“
This film series is intended to be a co-curricular activity that
aims at engaging students in academically relevant issues and
subjects,” Cheng said. She and Dr. Elaine Madison, associate
professor of English, were intrigued by the fall 2004 “mini
series” organized by Dr. Phyllis Frus, also an associate
professor of English, and they developed it into the semester-long
spring 2005 series, which included only documentary films.

“
We would like for the series to be an activity that students
attend because they want something interesting, free, and accessible,
which also enhances their educational experiences,” Cheng
said. “With that in mind, we have decided that feature
films should be included also,” she added.

The committee determined the following themes for the spring
2006 Viewpoints Film Series: Films from the Islamicate world,
the world of business, and the natural and social world. The
topics of the films in the series reflect many issues that
are addressed by HPU’s curriculum, and the films for
the spring semester series were selected from titles suggested
by HPU students
and faculty throughout the past year. The final selections
were all prescreened by committee members.

The committee hopes that the films will introduce students
to the complex and dynamic conditions behind the issue or historical
experience addressed. “Good films can really convey that
there are more than only ‘two sides,’ which so many
media commentators and people in general always assume,” Cheng
said. “In reality there are many different aspects to
every human experience, as well as intended and unintended
outcomes.

“
We want the film show to bring issues to life by capturing these
many dimensions and perspectives,” Cheng continued. “Films
can do much more to expand students’ interests as a person,
a student, a citizen, an activist, and more—but most importantly,
they can provide them with a variety of viewpoints—hence,
the title of this semester’s series.”

The Islamicate films
“
Islamicate” describes the parts of the world where Islam
is the civilizational core, whereas “Islamic” refers
to the religion of Islam. Viewpoints presents three Islamicate
films.

Silent Waters (Pakistan, 2003), set in 1979 Pakistan, where
General Zia-ul-Haq has imposed martial law and the country
has been decreed a Muslim state, is the story of a young man
who gets involved in radical sectarian politics, and his mother,
one of many Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim women left on the wrong
side of the border after the 1947 partition. Feb 1,2, 3.

Osama (Afghanistan, 2003), the first Afghani film since the
fall of the Taliban, shows a young girl’s life under
the Taliban as she poses as a boy in order to work and support
her family. Osama won an honorable mention at the 2003 Cannes
Film Festival. Feb 8, 9, 10.

Crimson Gold (Iran, 2003) dramatizes the experiences of a Hussein,
a humble pizza deliveryman who feels continually humiliated
by the injustices he sees all around him in contemporary Tehran.
Opening in the midst of a jewelry store robbery, fhe film then
flashes back several weeks to show what unpleasant experiences
have brought Hussein, the robber, to the breaking point. Feb
15, 16, 17

Rana’s Wedding (Palestine-Israel, 2002) The Palestinian-Israeli
conflict is explored through the eyes of a young woman who
has only 10 hours in which to negotiate her way around roadblocks,
soldiers, overworked officials, and into the heart of an elusive
lover in order to get to her wedding. This timely feature,
shot on location in East Jerusalem, Ramallah, and at checkpoints
in-between, explores love among the ruins of an occupied territory
and won the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival’s
2003 Nestor Almendros Prize for courage in filmmaking. Feb
22, 23, 24.

The world of businessEnron: Smartest Guys in the Room (United States, 2005) is
a multidimensional study of one of the biggest business scandals
in U.S. history. Based on the best-selling book of the same
name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind,
the film chronicles one of the greatest corporate disasters
in history, in which top executives from the seventh largest
company in this country walked away with over one billion
dollars,
leaving investors and employees with nothing. The film features
insider accounts and rare corporate audio and videotapes
that reveal colossal personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy
and
the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy.
The human drama that unfolds within Enron’s walls resembles
a Greek tragedy and produces a domino effect that could shape
the face of our economy and ethical code for years to come.
Mar 2, 3, 4.

The Take (Canada, 2004) turns the globalization debate on
its head. In suburban Buenos Aires, after Argentina’s economic
collapse in 2001, 30 unemployed auto-parts workers walk into
their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave.
All they want is to restart the silent machines. These former
employees of the Forja auto plant are part of a daring new
movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and
creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system. What shines
through in the film is the simple drama of workers’ lives
and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing
injustice of dignity denied. Mar 8, 9, 10.

The Corporation (United States, 2004) is a controversial
documentary on how corporate behavior can threaten economic,
political,
and social life around the globe. The film is an in-depth
psychological examination of the model of the corporation
as a legal “person” through
various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in
its behavior, this type of “person” is typically
a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience, a
profound threat to our world and our future. We also see what
people with courage, intelligence, and determination can do
to stop it. Mar 15, 16, 17.

The natural and social worldSpirited Away (Japan, 2001) is an anime film by master animation
director Hayao Miyazaki who follows up on his record-breaking
1997 opus Princess Mononoke with this surreal Alice in Wonderland-like
tale about a little girl lost in a strange and and fascinating
other world and her quest to return to her own. Mar 22, 23,
24.

Being Caribou (Canada, 2005) is about an environmentalist Leanne
Allison and wildlife biologist Karsten Heuer who followed a
herd of 120,000 caribou on foot, across 1,500 kilometers of
rugged Arctic tundra including the herd’s calving grounds
in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The husband-and-wife
team wants to raise awareness of threats to the caribou’s
survival. The journey, which includes hordes of mosquitoes
and an encounter with a hungry grizzly bear, forces them to
reevaluate what it means to be a part of true wilderness. Dramatic
footage and video diaries provide an intimate perspective of
an epic expedition. April 5, 6, 7.

Simple Courage (United States, 1992) is an Emmy-winning documentary
by local filmmaker Stephanie Castillo that compares the handling
of the leprosy epidemic in the late-19th century with the global
AIDS situation today by documents the treatment of leprosy
victims in Hawai‘i in the 19th and early 20th century.
More than 8,000 sufferers, mostly native Hawaiians, were banished
to an isolated peninsula and practically abandoned except for
the efforts of one man, a Catholic missionary from Belgium,
Father Damien, who in a simple act of courage took it upon
himself to bring comfort to these hopeless people. Archival
footage and moving interviews with survivors show how the emotional
pain of banishment from their ancestral homes added to the
ravages of the disease and how Damien transformed their prison
into a place of decency and respect. Apr 19, 20, 21.

Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers and Tides (Germany, 2001) is
a beautiful documentary that depicts the magical relationship
between art and nature while painting a visually intoxicating
portrait of famed artist Andy Goldsworthy. The film follows
the bohemian free spirit Goldsworthy all over the world as
he demonstrates and describes his unique creative process as
he creates masterpieces--long-winding rock walls, icicle sculptures,
interlocking leaf chains, and multicolored pools of flowers--entirely
of natural materials, so natural that nature threatens and
often succeeds in destroying his art, sometimes before it is
even finished. Apr 26, 27, 28.

The Viewpoints Film Series schedule for spring 2006 can be
found on Pipeline, where students can also participate in online
discussions of each film as well as suggest films for future
discussion.
For more information, call or e-mail Dr. Grace Cheng at 544-9384,or
gcheng@hpu.edu.